A massive national failure
Over the decades, the U.S. has built a Rube Goldberg contraption out of employer provided health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and some smaller bits and piece that has resulted in, officially, about 90% of Americans having insurance.Great news! That means we can all afford the medical services we need and nobody has to go broke because they get sick or are injured in a car crash or shot by somebody exercising their Second Amendment rights! Err, no. Sadly it does not mean that. As a matter of fact, four out of ten insured adults surveyed in 2023 said they had skipped or delayed some type of care in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

Increased Medicaid Coverage Is Not Improving Low Birth Weight
Marc JoffeWith so many people obtaining Medicaid coverage in the wake of the Affordable Care Act and during the pandemic, it is worth investigating whether this expanded eligibility is improving health outcomes. Overall, decreases in theproportion of uninsured individuals over the last decade are not being matched by improved life expectancy. Indeed, life expectancy at birth in 2021was lower than it was when the Affordable Care Act passed. But this fact tells us little about the benefits of Medicaid coverage since the decline has been driven in large part by COVID-19 deaths among elderly patients (often not on Medicaid) as...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 13, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Marc Joffe Source Type: blogs

Medicare Is Not Taxing or Coercing Merck, Just Reducing Its Government Subsidies
Michael F. CannonPharmaceutical giant Merck issuing Medicare, claiming new drug ‐​pricing reforms that Congress enacted in last year’sInflation Reduction Act coerce the company into selling its wares to the program at below ‐​market prices. In theWall Street Journal,attorney Daniel Troyopines that the new rules violate the First and Fifth Amendments. Big, if true.What ’s really happening here is that Merck is making tons of money off the taxpayers and wants to keep the gravy train rolling. So the company is offering whatever bad arguments it can to prevent any reductions in its Medicare subsidies.First, a  few...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 9, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Michael F. Cannon Source Type: blogs

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New CMS rules could help increase access to health care for millions of Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries.        (Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog)
Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog - June 8, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Cindy Mann, Julian Polaris, Nina V. Punukollu Source Type: blogs

ONC ’s HTI-1 Places Undue Burdens on Healthcare Providers, Health IT Developers
The following is a guest article by David Bucciferro, Chair of the EHR Association In April 2023, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released its much-anticipated proposed rule to advance interoperability, improve transparency, and support further access, exchange, and use of electronic health information (EHI). While the EHR Association has long supported the goals of the proposed rule, called Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing Proposed Rule (HTI-1), we have a number of real concerns about...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - June 7, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Clinical EMR-EHR Health IT Company Healthcare IT Regulations Advanced Interoperability CDI Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Clinical Decision Support CMS David Bucciferro Decision Support Interventions DSI eHI EHR Ass Source Type: blogs

A Hand Up, Not a Hand-Out
BY KIM BELLARD As many of you did, I followed the recent debt ceiling saga closely, and am relieved that we now have a compromise, of sorts.  The House Republicans demanded a lot of things, most of which they did not get, but one area where they did prevail was in toughening work requirements for food (SNAP) and income (TANF).  They somehow believe that there are uncounted numbers of “able-bodied” people sitting around on their couches collecting government benefits, a myth that goes back to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen stereotype, and have long advocated work requirements as the remedy.  Ironic...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 6, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Guaranteed Income Programs Kim Bellard SNAP Source Type: blogs

Aspirion Announces Acquisition of FIRM Revenue Cycle Management Services, Inc.
Aspirion, a leading technology-enabled healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM) provider for complex claims and revenue integrity, announced today that it has acquired FIRM Revenue Cycle Management Services, Inc. (FIRM RCM), a trusted partner to hospital systems in the recovery of denied, unpaid, and underpaid medical insurance claims. As part of the announcement, the FIRM RCM team will continue to be led by Nancy Momcilovic. Simultaneously, Joseph Cook, Principal, will retire from active management following the completion of the acquisition. The acquisition closed on May 18, 2023. “We are thrilled to welcome FIR...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - June 5, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Amy Amick Aspirion FIRM RCM FIRM Revenue Cycle Management Services Inc. Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A Joseph Cook Nancy Momcilovic Richard Thomas Source Type: blogs

Healthcare Innovation Funding – Regulations and Disrupting Traditional Models
We are at an exciting time in the world of healthcare! With technology becoming more accessible and more and more digital natives entering the work force, there’s an abundance of innovation. We have so many more people that are coming up with creative digital solutions to the challenges that we are currently facing. However, while there are plenty of great ideas and startups, there’s just simply not enough money to fund all of them. So how do you make sure that you’re the one getting the funding you need and not another startup? Oftentimes, the answer lies within making yourself stand out, and a great wa...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - June 2, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Regulations Bill Charnetski Ceteri Capital Debiopharm Derek Streat DexCare Frederico Ferreira Braga Healthcare Disruption Healthcare Innovation Funding Jay Ackerman Microsoft P Source Type: blogs

The world is flat
This article also mentions the chemtrails  absurdity.Climate change denial and chemtrails go back a long way, basically since right wing politics in the U.S. and Europe went batshit crazy. They obviously didn ' t like the Affordable Care Act, but the reasons they said they didn ' t like it were hallucinatory.Remember Sarah Palin and " death panels "?The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama ' s ' death panel ' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ' level of productivity in society. 'That was a total ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 27, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

The Goal of RPM is Management, Not Monitoring
The following is a guest article by Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO at Rimidi Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a key capability in healthcare, particularly as we have seen multiple factors align in recent years: advances in medical device technology, decreased cost of cellular connectivity, new reimbursement models, and consumer demand that accelerated during the pandemic. RPM offers the ability to follow the patient from the clinic to the home and to provide a more complete picture of their health by collecting daily metrics such as blood pressure, blood glucose, weight, pulse oximetry, etc. But the healthcare in...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - May 25, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Guest Author Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Chronic Conditions CMS Data Connection Data Interoperability Digital Transformation EMR Fi Source Type: blogs

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The House debt ceiling bill includes Medicaid work requirements, which have been shown to have little impact on employment rates.        (Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog)
Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog - May 24, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Sherry A. Glied, Dong Ding Source Type: blogs

What Can We Learn from the Envision Bankruptcy?
This study ignited a firestorm of press criticism and was followed by an aggressive lobbying and PR campaign funded by United and other large commercial payers  aimed at restricting balance billing by firms like Envision.  This campaign culminated in the Dec 2020 Congressional passage of the No Surprises Act, which effectively ended balance billing and subjected thousands of Envision’s out-of-network bills to an arbitration process. NSA went into effect in January 2022.   Ironically, days prior to its Chapter 11 filing, Envision won a $91 million judgment from an arbitration panel against United fo...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 24, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care Envision HCA Jeff Goldsmith Private equity Sound Physicians Tenet United HealthGroup Source Type: blogs

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To reverse the maternal health crisis in the U.S., Medicaid managed care must be central to any comprehensive maternal health redesign.        (Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog)
Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog - May 23, 2023 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Sara Rosenbaum, Anne Rossier Markus, Caitlin Murphy, Rebecca Morris, Maria Casoni, Kay Johnson Source Type: blogs

Asking Bard And ChatGPT To Find The Best Medical Care, I Got Truth And Truthiness
BY MICHAEL MILLENSON If you ask ChatGPT how many procedures a certain surgeon does or a specific hospital’s infection rate, the OpenAI and Microsoft chatbot inevitably replies with some version of, “I don’t do that.” But depending upon how you ask, Google’s Bard provides a very different response, even recommending a “consultation” with particular clinicians. Bard told me how many knee replacement surgeries were performed by major Chicago hospitals in 2021, their infection rates and the national average. It even told me which Chicago surgeon does the most knee surgeries and his infection rate. When I...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 22, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Tech Uncategorized Bard ChatGPT Michael Millenson OpenAPI Source Type: blogs

From Debt Ceiling Crisis to Debt Crisis
Romina BocciaThe U.S. government teeters on the brink of defaulting on its payment obligations over the next few weeks as the debt limit threatens to bind in early June. There ’s been extensivecoverage about the potential for catastrophic impacts on the economy if Congress and the President do not raise the debt ceiling. What ’s missing from the debate is serious consideration of the potentially catastrophic longer‐​term scenario the United States could face if spending and debt continue growing unabated.Current debt limit discussions are indicative of the myopia that characterizes the federal budget process. A  d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 22, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Romina Boccia Source Type: blogs